The secret of time. It's very simple, and delicious with mint sauce.

Let me start this blog by saying - last night the clocks went back an hour.  We all knew that, right?  I mean, none of you have been sitting there drumming your fingers and looking at your watches, muttering 'where is she?' and 'late again, Lovering?', and such purjorative remarks, have you?  Well, good, I'm glad we've established that, because today I am going to break to you some news that may take some digesting.

Are you ready?

Yesterday I was doing a book signing in York. Where I sat, in Waterstones, for two hours.  And, yes, I got to sign books and talk to people, and lots of lovely things happened, but, essentially, I was sitting down for two hours.  Well, apart from the few minutes when I had to get up and have a wee.  And those two hours were loooooooong hours, let me tell you.  I suppose I could have enlivened my time a touch by eating a big bun, but there's something inherently unattractive about an author, well, I suppose about me, specifically, sitting in front of a pile of books and shoving a sticky pastry into my mouth, so I didn't.  I forebore.

But!  Later, I was at home, doing 'authorly things' (contrary to the opinion of many, those authorly things don't involve lying on a sofa being fed grapes by a shirtless Johnny Depp.  Although, both lying on a couch with Johnny and the activities I actually partook in, involved flushing and plunging, one involves bleach and the other doesn't.)

Just take a rough guess as to which was involved.  Go on...

And, within mere seconds of the final, successful flush, it was time to go to bed.  And so, I formulated my theory, which goes thusly - time in the city moves much more slowly than time in the countryside.  And there is only one possible conclusion to be drawn from this.  What do we have much, much more of in the countryside than in towns?

Exactly.
Sheep suck time.  The denser the concentration of sheep, the faster the time goes, in some valleys in Wales it is already 2013, and New Zealand celebrated the year 2020 several decades ago. And so, I have solved this little 'why does time move faster sometimes than at others' conundrum!  When one wants time to slow down, ie, when on holiday or performing a pleasurable task, or when a deadline is permeating your life with the slow dread of a sprout-fart in a church hall, simply ensure that your life is as free from sheep as you can make it.  Time will instantly slow to a crawl. Alternatively, when looking forward to an event and therefore wishing for time to rattle past, try sitting in a field with a bucket of whatever sheep eat, and let the little woolly time-suckers do the work for you!

I don't know why it's taken everyone so long to figure this out, actually.  Go and ask the average farmer if he ever has time for a manicure, or for a fortnight's cruise around the Canary Isles.  You may wish to wear a protective helmet, because the answer may well be propelled with some force.

Physics, huh, there are few problems that cannot be solved by an author who hasn't got a sticky bun. Or Johnny Depp.